What a Long, Strange Trip It’s Been

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On the campaign trail, McCain immediately got on message. I became a prop, a cartoon character created to be pummeled.

Whew! What was all that mess? I’m still in a daze, sorting it all out, decompressing.

Pass the Vitamin C.

For the past few years, I have gone about my business, hanging out with my kids and, now, my grandchildren, taking care of our elders (they moved in as the kids moved out), going to work, teaching and writing. And every day, I participate in the never-ending effort to build a powerful and irresistible movement for peace and social justice.

In years past, I would now and then–often unpredictably–appear in the newspapers or on TV, sometimes with a reference to Fugitive Days, my 2001 memoir of the exhilarating and difficult years of resistance against the American war in Vietnam. It was a time when the world was in flames, revolution was in the air, and the serial assassinations of black leaders disrupted our utopian dreams.

These media episodes of fleeting notoriety always led to some extravagant and fantastic assertions about what I did, what I might have said and what I probably believe now.

It was always a bit surreal. Then came this political season.

During the primary, the blogosphere was full of chatter about my relationship with President-elect Barack Obama. We had served together on the board of the Woods Foundation and knew one another as neighbors in Chicago’s Hyde Park. In 1996, at a coffee gathering that my wife, Bernardine Dohrn, and I held for him, I made a donation to his campaign for the Illinois State Senate.

Obama’s political rivals and enemies thought they saw an opportunity to deepen a dishonest perception that he is somehow un-American, alien, linked to radical ideas, a closet terrorist who sympathizes with extremism–and they pounced.

Sen. Hillary Clinton’s (D-N.Y.) campaign provided the script, which included guilt by association, demonization of people Obama knew (or might have known), creepy questions about his background and dark hints about hidden secrets yet to be uncovered.

On March 13, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), apparently in an attempt to reassure the “base,” sat down for an interview with Sean Hannity of Fox News. McCain was not yet aware of the narrative Hannity had been spinning for months, and so Hannity filled him in: Ayers is an unrepentant “terrorist,” he explained, “On 9/11, of all days, he had an article where he bragged about bombing our Pentagon, bombing the Capitol and bombing New York City police headquarters. … He said, ‘I regret not doing more.’ “

McCain couldn’t believe it.

Neither could I.

On the campaign trail, McCain immediately got on message. I became a prop, a cartoon character created to be pummeled.

When Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin got hold of it, the attack went viral. At a now-famous Oct. 4 rally, she said Obama was “pallin’ around with terrorists.” (I pictured us sharing a milkshake with two straws.)

The crowd began chanting, “Kill him!” “Kill him!” It was downhill from there.

My voicemail filled up with hate messages. They were mostly from men, all venting and sweating and breathing heavily. A few threats: “Watch out!” and “You deserve to be shot.” And some e-mails, like this one I got from [email protected]: “I’m coming to get you and when I do, I’ll water-board you.”

The police lieutenant who came to copy down those threats deadpanned that he hoped the guy who was going to shoot me got there before the guy who was going to water-board me, since it would be most foul to be tortured and then shot. (We have been pals ever since he was first assigned to investigate threats made against me in 1987, after I was hired as an assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago.)

The good news was that every time McCain or Palin mentioned my name, they lost a point or two in the polls. The cartoon invented to hurt Obama was now poking holes in the rapidly sinking McCain-Palin ship.

That ’60s show

To this day, when our country holds a presidential election, we judge the candidates through the lens of the 1960s. … We all know Obama is cozy with William Ayers a ’60s radical who planted a bomb in the capital building and then later went on to even more heinous crimes by becoming a college professor. … Let us keep fighting the culture wars of our grandparents. The ’60s are a political gift that keeps on giving.

It was inevitable. McCain would bet the house on a dishonest and largely discredited vision of the ’60s, which was the defining decade for him. He built his political career on being a prisoner of war in Vietnam.

The ’60s–as myth and symbol–is much abused: the downfall of civilization in one account, a time of defeat and humiliation in a second, and a perfect moment of righteous opposition, peace and love in a third.

The idea that the 2008 election may be the last time in American political life that the ’60s plays any role whatsoever is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, let’s get over the nostalgia and move on. On the other, the lessons we might have learned from the black freedom movement and from the resistance against the Vietnam War have never been learned. To achieve this would require that we face history fully and honestly, something this nation has never done.

The war in Vietnam was an illegal invasion and occupation, much of it conducted as a war of terror against the civilian population. The U.S. military killed millions of Vietnamese in air raids–like the one conducted by McCain–and entire areas of the country were designated free-fire zones, where American pilots indiscriminately dropped surplus ordinance–an immoral enterprise by any measure.

What is really important

McCain and Palin–or as our late friend Studs Terkel put it, “Joe McCarthy in drag”–would like to bury the ’60s. The ’60s, after all, was a time of rejecting obedience and conformity in favor of initiative and courage. The ’60s pushed us to a deeper appreciation of the humanity of every human being. And that is the threat it poses to the right wing, hence the attacks and all the guilt by association.

McCain and Palin demanded to “know the full extent” of the Obama-Ayers “relationship” so that they can know if Obama, as Palin put it, “is telling the truth to the American people or not.”

This is just plain stupid.

Obama has continually been asked to defend something that ought to be at democracy’s heart: the importance of talking to as many people as possible in this complicated and wildly diverse society, of listening with the possibility of learning something new, and of speaking with the possibility of persuading or influencing others.

The McCain-Palin attacks not only involved guilt by association, they also assumed that one must apply a political litmus test to begin a conversation.

On Oct. 4, Palin described her supporters as those who “see America as the greatest force for good in this world” and as a “beacon of light and hope for others who seek freedom and democracy.” But Obama, she said, “Is not a man who sees America as you see it and how I see America.” In other words, there are “real” Americans – and then there are the rest of us.

In a robust and sophisticated democracy, political leaders–and all of us–ought to seek ways to talk with many people who hold dissenting, or even radical, ideas. Lacking that simple and yet essential capacity to question authority, we might still be burning witches and enslaving our fellow human beings today.

Maybe we could welcome our current situation–torn by another illegal war, as it was in the ’60s–as an opportunity to search for the new.

Perhaps we might think of ourselves not as passive consumers of politics but as fully mobilized political actors. Perhaps we might think of our various efforts now, as we did then, as more than a single campaign, but rather as our movement-in-the-making.

We might find hope in the growth of opposition to war and occupation worldwide. Or we might be inspired by the growing movements for reparations and prison abolition, or the rising immigrant rights movement and the stirrings of working people everywhere, or by gay and lesbian and transgender people courageously pressing for full recognition.

Yet hope–my hope, our hope–resides in a simple self-evident truth: the future is unknown, and it is also entirely unknowable.

History is always in the making. It’s up to us. It is up to me and to you. Nothing is predetermined. That makes our moment on this earth both hopeful and all the more urgent–we must find ways to become real actors, to become authentic subjects in our own history.

We may not be able to will a movement into being, but neither can we sit idly for a movement to spring full-grown, as from the head of Zeus.

We have to agitate for democracy and egalitarianism, press harder for human rights, learn to build a new society through our self-transformations and our limited everyday struggles.

At the turn of the last century, Eugene Debs, the great Socialist Party leader from Terre Haute, Ind., told a group of workers in Chicago, “If I could lead you into the Promised Land, I would not do it, because someone else would come along and lead you out.”

In this time of new beginnings and rising expectations, it is even more urgent that we figure out how to become the people we have been waiting to be.

Bill Ayers is a Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is the author of Fugitive Days (Beacon) and co-author, with Bernardine Dohrn, of Race Course: Against White Supremacy (Third World Press).

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That is quite a strange trip indeed.Posted by Omer Altay on 2009-07-03 15:14:08

More context surrounding the good professor.Posted by Natalie on 2009-03-10 01:48:18

Your average "hippie radical" back then detested Ayers and his counterproductive actions.
And I doubt most of them really wanted a communist nation, although some of them probably did. They just wanted the war to end, like most people.
But Ayers desired much more ...... and still does.
It's not "a festival of hate" to expose and oppose this ideology, it's just common sense. If someone came up to your house and insisted he was going to paint it another color, and you didn't like his choice, would you be hateful for telling him he had no right to impose his decorative desires upon your private property against your will?Posted by Natalie on 2009-01-22 08:44:40

Hi, y'all!
Jee-e-e-ez, Louise!
Talk about saying the name of the demon and having it show up! Festival of Hate '08! A keyboard punching smackdown!
I'm too young to remember the sixties. I was a toddler when they ended. Still, when I heard of hippie radicals in my history classes, my first thought was "What made them do the things they did? What was going on to make them do such terrible things?". It certainly wasn't "KILL THE TRAITOROUS SCUM!!!" I let Ann Coulter have that thought, which she later shared with Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity at recess.Apparently, that thought can shared in a way that makes the biblical loaves and fishes look paltry and miserly.
Curiously, right-wing behavior has proven Darwin wrong. Sheep can be docile yet bloodthirsty.
Ta-ta!Posted by Aunty Rightwing on 2008-12-01 16:52:25

Just a kindly college professor* I see around the neighborhood once in a while, who used to be against the Vietnam war I think, like lots of people were. I wave to him when I'm getting my paper.

* Ayers was not simply protesting "against" the Vietnam War. Firstly, he wasn't against war in principle, he was agitating for the victory of the communist forces in Vietnam. In other words: He wasn't against the war, he was against our side in the war. This is spelled out in great detail in Prairie Fire. Secondly, and more significantly, the Vietnam War was only one of many issues cited by the Weather Undergound as the justifications for their violent acts. As you will see below, in various quotes from Prairie Fire and in their own list of their violent actions (and in additional impartial documentary links), Ayers and the Weather Underground enumerated dozens of different grievances as the rationales for their bombings -- their overarching goal being to inspire a violent mass uprising against the United States government in order to establish a communist "dictatorship of the proletariat," in Ayers' own words.
Ayers and his co-authors freely brag about their bombings and other violent and illegal acts, and even provide a detailed list, most likely typed up by Ayers himself, of the crimes they had committed up to that point. Ayers' list, scanned directly from Prairie Fire, is shown below. He may have escaped conviction due to a legal technicality (the prosecutors failed to get a warrant during some of their surveillance of the Weather Underground), but this in no way means that Ayers was factually innocent of the crimes. As has been widely reported, after the case against him was dropped, Ayers decribed himself as "guilty as hell, free as a bird."
Just because Ayers tries to appear respectable now doesn't mean that he wasn't a violent revolutionary in the past. In fact, as the text of Prairie Fire shows, Ayers was one of the most extreme extremists in American political history. And as the links given at the end of this essay will prove, Ayers is just as politically radical now as he was back then. He has never renounced the political views he professed in the 1960s and 1970s. The only difference is that now he no longer commits violence to achieve his goals. After his stint as the leader of the Weather Underground, he shifted to a different tactic: to spread his ideology under the aegis of academia. But the goal remains the same: to turn America into a communist nation. Ayers' contemporary writings contain many of the same ideas (and even the same phrases) found in Prairie Fire, just toned down to make them more palatable in polite society.

Posted by Natalie on 2008-11-18 09:19:35

A free market economist told me recently that the economy had been going along beautifully for last 30 years, but now we were having a little "glitch".
I told him thata "glitch" is what you call it when a light bulb goes out. What's happening now is a little bit worse than that.
Have you noticed that all over the world, even "conservative" governments are pumping hundreds of billions into the "capitalist" economy? What are they scared of? More than a glitch, I think.Posted by mcmchugh99 on 2008-11-18 01:01:34

To sarcastically say things like "that free market thing sure worked out well, didn't it?" is like Tonya Harding sending in her thug (who would represent unions, onerous environmental regulations, high corporate taxes, lending mandates, etc) to whack Nancy Kerrigan's leg, and then wondering why she didn't do so well with her next performance.
Our economic system needs to have maximum freedom, with some obvious basic guidelines, and not be messed with at every turn by the ulterior-motivated leeches of government and labor unions. Until then, it will be incapable of turning in what otherwise would be an excellent performance, just as was the case with Nancy.
This is not the view of Ayers, Obama or the leadership of the D party. They are firmly in the camp of continuing and increasing this hobbling of our economy, which, if not for their destructive interference, way above and beyond reasonable basic parameter setting and oversight, would be in stellar form.Posted by Natalie on 2008-11-17 14:40:21

Obama is going to grow the government.
600,000 union members in government. What will that figure be in 2012? 1.8 Million union members all voting Democrat?
How long before we all work for the government?Posted by Carlos1962 on 2008-11-17 07:29:39

I do think we're headed in a more state capitlist direction--although Bush and the Republicans mistakenly call it "socialism". It's more like a mercantilist system, where the state invests in busines and guides the economy, nationalizes some things.
Bush and his Treasury Secretary are already doing all this, more than the Democrats would have dared. They are statists, too, but still calling themselves free marketeers. Obama will probably continue these policies, even expand them.
Does he even have a choice? He can't let his own voters in the auto industry lost their jobs. He's a northern man, elected mostly by votes from the north and west. Look at the elctoral map. It might as well be the election of 1860.
I don't think Ayers has anything to do with it. His as much a symbol of Joe the Plumber. Ayers is a cardboard cutout, a cartoon character, of everything you love to hate about the 1960s and the Baby Boomers.Posted by mcmchugh99 on 2008-11-17 05:54:30

What free market capitalism? The one where Freddy and Fanny both government sponsored entities backed up by the US treasury agree to buy up any crap mortgages and liar loans that banks can scrape up? The loans to illegal aliens and other people with food stamps and welfare benefits for income? Liar loans. Freddy and Fanny said, bring them on. Free money, dive in.
The rating companies seeing the bottomless pocket of the US taxpayer backing the mortgages of course rated the crap they were peddling as AA securities. Investors worldwide were taken for a ride due to the US government's pushing the idea that owning a house is a right.
Or the free market capitalism in the medical industry where no one is turned away at the emergency center regardless of the ability to pay?
Government IS the problem. Creating endless problems with their interventions and then rushing in to fix what they destroyed in the first place.
Ayers and Obama both worship at the alter of Statism and promote that agenda relentlessly. As long as they have control of the state of course.Posted by Carlos1962 on 2008-11-17 04:58:03

I really doubt that Obama is a 1960s-stle radical--or self-styled "radical". To me, the late-1960s had a lot of revolutionary posturing by children of the privileged classes like Mr. Ayers. They never really changed anything and their historical legacy and influence will likley be nil.
I know that Obama is not in favor of free market capitalism of the Reagan-Thatcher type, but that system isn't looking too healthy these days. Personally, I'm still a Keynesian, and believe in a mixed economy. We should have a state-owned sector without trying to run everything from cetral headquarters, as well as a regulated capitalist secot, and a cooperative sector of employee-owned firms.Posted by mcmchugh99 on 2008-11-17 02:30:22

McCain and Palin badly fumbled the Ayers issue, which could have been used to powerful and wholly legitimate effect. His terrorist past had already been exposed .... with Obama cleverly distancing himself simply by saying he was only eight years old. However, the real issue that would have resonated with parents everywhere had to do with education.
Ayers' view on education is that the classroom is a place not to teach reading, writing, math and perhaps even say the Pledge, but to indoctrinate students from an early age into hating traditional American institutions that made and keep the country great, strong and free -- oh, silly little things like capitalism and the military. Ayers thinks that students should be guided down a path of leftist "social justice" thinking, which of course is just another way of saying socialism. It's all about "hating the man", but in a much more insidious manner than the young Ayers and the hippies of the 60's employed.
There's plenty of evidence that Obama is down with this view. He wrote a positive "blurb" for one of Ayers' books on the subject, and he served atop the "Chicago Annenberg Challenge" (CAC) dispensing millions to Ayers' pet leftist projects and causes. He clearly is devoted to ACORN and all its affiliate organizations, promising to give them a seat next to him at the helm of power. ACORN is at the heart of the Ayers' plan for hijacking the American mind.
There's much to be learned here. And here.
Initially, Ayers came after our physical institutions of defense and government. Now, he's coming after our minds, and the minds of our children. God help us if Obama, as I suspect, is on the same wavelength.

"The CAC's agenda flowed from Mr. Ayers's educational philosophy, which called for infusing students and their parents with a radical political commitment, and which downplayed achievement tests in favor of activism. In the mid-1960s, Mr. Ayers taught at a radical alternative school, and served as a community organizer in Cleveland's ghetto.
In works like "City Kids, City Teachers" and "Teaching the Personal and the Political," Mr. Ayers wrote that teachers should be community organizers dedicated to provoking resistance to American racism and oppression. His preferred alternative? "I'm a radical, Leftist, small 'c' communist," Mr. Ayers said in an interview in Ron Chepesiuk's, "Sixties Radicals," at about the same time Mr. Ayers was forming CAC.
CAC translated Mr. Ayers's radicalism into practice. Instead of funding schools directly, it required schools to affiliate with "external partners," which actually got the money. Proposals from groups focused on math/science achievement were turned down. Instead CAC disbursed money through various far-left community organizers, such as the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (or Acorn)".

None of this is technically criminal of course, but most average ordinary parents -- who think quite highly of free market capitalism and want their kids prepared to compete in it, not trained to destroy it -- would find it highly offensive and wholly inappropriate. Just as the stealth injection of Christian religion into the classroom would be to many others, Ayers included no doubt. Much of Ayers' agenda is already going on in schools today, with likely much more on the way with Obama's help and cooperation.Posted by Natalie on 2008-11-14 21:21:18

My hope is that Mr. Ayers represents a movement whose time has gone, a radical chic counterculture that is fading away with the Baby Boomers. Since 1968, the Right has been running against it, and very successfully most of the time. Basically, they ran in every election with a flag in one hand and a Bible in the other, which made life very unpleasant indeed for politicians like McGovern, Clinton, and Kerry, etc, etc.
This didn't work very well aginst Obama, though, partly because he's not of that generation, and partly because the Republican free marketeer ideology has collapsed with the economy. For that reason alone, this reform wave is more likely to resemble the New Deal or the Progressive Era than the 1960s--and thank God for it.
Not that condemn the entire decade, only what happened after 1965. Up to that point, there were some useful reforms such as the Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act, Medicare, Medicaid and so on. Afterwards, all hell broke loose: Vietnam, riots, assassinations, right wing backlash.
We have been living with the consequences of that nightmare for decades, although it looks like we're finally escaping from it.
Michael C. McHughPosted by mcmchugh99 on 2008-11-14 03:23:33

part 3
He is such a solipsist that he thinks that McCain lost points every time someone called him a terrorist.
McCain did pretty good until the economic crisis, that's what really brought him down to the level he was at the end.
What caused him to do so well, even at the end of such an unpopular presidency, was the reasonable question about what the core beliefs of Obama considering the soil of inner city Chicago he was planted and
first grew in and his associations from that time.
I was reassured enough to vote for him. But, I think it's a shame and comic insult that Ayer's was able to sail through the whole thing without having his credentials, beliefs, finances and associations examined,
when certainly it was more worthy of being explored than than the licensing, finances, taxes, business, personal relationships and ethics of Joe the Plumber, and the nattering nabob elites of the media were all
over him.
The only media person I saw was an ambush by a sole FOX reporter who tried to get answers from him who tried to get answers from him when he was walking from his car to his house. Ayers called the police,
and an officer (probably who was only six when Ayers bombed the headquarters where he now worked) escorted the reporter away.
Ayers gets all huffy about this description of him:
"Ayers is an unrepentant "terrorist," he explained, "On 9/11, of all days, he had an article where he bragged about bombing our Pentagon, bombing the Capitol and bombing New York City police headquarters. Posted by doncurry on 2008-11-13 14:55:51

part2
CHRONOLOGY OF BOMBINGS AND ACTIONS CARRIED OUT BY THE
WEATHER UNDERGROUND ORGANIZATION
Posted by doncurry on 2008-11-13 14:55:14

Part 1
What a vain unscrupulous guy this Ayers is. Surrounded by the fawning sycophants of academia, who join him in his arrogant disdain for the people who support him pay his wages, build the office he pontificates in and etc.
Listen, I vote for Obama right? and.....
A review of his book Fugitive Days published in 2001
"All that was more than thirty years ago, but Bill Ayers still looks back with fondness on the violence of what was called in those days the "New Left." Indeed, in Fugitive Days, he attempts to bring his readers to share his reasoning. He and his comrades were moved, he insists, by the most decent of motives to undertake, not terrorism, but a restrained and purposeful form of "resistance." Terrorists seek to harm average peoplePosted by doncurry on 2008-11-13 14:54:20

Communism didn't kill anyone- Stalin did. Kind of like guns, right? They don't kill- people kill.
I think a better way of shutting down dissenting opinions has already been found right here by the Bush administration- fire anyone in the Justice Dept. who is not in ideological lockstep with the neo-cons. Or perhaps the more blatant McCarthyism of the 1950's.
And isn't it too bad that social security wasn't privatized four years ago as Bush would've liked- I'm sure we all would've enjoyed watching our futures go down the drain alongside the Dow and the major lending institutions.
The Brave New World can sometimes be found right here.Posted by jaybee73 on 2008-11-12 19:29:07

Communism has only killed 100 million people in the twentieth century. Lets give it the old college try again and win one for the Obammer. Those old white guys were rookies. Their main problem was they just weren't as smart as Barack Obama and Bill Ayers. We'll show them how it's done.
First shut down any dissenting opinions with the fairness doctrine. Second, nationalize the auto industry, energy industry, medical care and banking. Convince the sheeple to trade their retirement investments for a guaranteed pension. Convert private housing to collective housing to bring about social justice and equality.
That ought to keep us busy for the first four years.
Birds will be singing, the oceans will recede, the global warming will fade. We will go to work for the collective each day with a song in our hearts praising our dear leader and praying for his continued steady hand on the tiller of America. Guiding us to the promised land of egalitarian nirvana.
No one will ever have to pay their mortgage.(Because you no longer own your house)
No one will ever have to worry about paying for gasoline for your car. (Because you won't have private property and only leaders ride in cars.)
Two legs good, four legs bad!Posted by Carlos1962 on 2008-11-12 18:53:06

Okey-doke, Bill, you're not a radical. You never were. Stop beguiling yourself.
I'm far less interested in your political philosophy than in the fact that someone as trite and banal as you has reached such a lofty position in the education racket.
"Pass me the Vitamin C, dude."
Vitamin C has never been shown to attenuate the toxic narcissism that you and so many of your fellow Boomers suffer from. You guys tried to copyright 'revolution' and demand payment from subsequent generations.
If you had read the Situationists, a weak current may have passed through the insipid farina inside your skull. The Spectacle is dependent on hack actors like you playing dress-up in shopworn costumes.Posted by rhizome on 2008-11-12 02:51:55

The Republican attempt to smear Barack Obama's character because of his insignificant relationship with Bill Ayers was pathetic. Nonetheless, Ayers is an unrepentant screwball who is still rationalizing his reckless and criminal acts as "radical acts against property." That is reasoning worthy of Osama bin Ladin, George Bush, Dick Cheney and David Addington. When you set off a bomb, you have to assume that someone is going to get hurt or killed and you are morally and legally responsible for anything that happens as a result. The only reason Ayers has been permitted back into respectable society is his Daddy's money and influence. Unless he wants to apologize for his egregious misconduct he should just shut his big yapper. He has absolutely nothing to say which would interest me in any way.Posted by irishlaw on 2008-11-11 19:20:12

Bravo BillPosted by HarryE on 2008-11-11 17:27:20

armaros,
Tribes by definition are not multi-cultural, and I never suggested they were. I'm not sure what you mean by multi-faceted, but I'm sure that tribal life has different aspects to it that make life interesting, in the same way we have holidays, hobbies, games, social activities, etc. And tribal societies are egalitarian in that everyone participates equally in the feeding of the tribe, and everyone benefits equally from it. Of course, there are people who have more say in tribal affairs than others, and this function would vary greatly from tribe to tribe, but tribal societies are dictated primarily by the laws of nature more than anything else. As for imposing tribalism on large societies, that's a silly idea. Furthermore, as I said in my first post, I don't advocate the imposition of anything on anyone.
What fascist regimes haven't been nationalistic or racist? As far as I'm aware, the fascist regimes I'm familiar with were highly nationalistic and racist, namely, Mussolini's Italy and Hitler's Germany. And how were these regimes collectivist? I'm also not sure what you mean by "Communism is universal and in that differs from fascism."Posted by jaybee73 on 2008-11-11 14:56:40

Jaybe
Tribal societies are not egalitarian and certainly not multi cultural or multi faceted.
Fascism is not always racist or nationalistic.
It is collectivism thrust upon the population by the state.
Mussolini was a socialist btw as was Hitler.
Communism is universal and in that differs from fascism. However their methods are the same. Cohersion, dictatorship and suppression of liberty.
How can you impose tribalism on large societies anyway. Tribes are the most dictatorial structures.Posted by armaros on 2008-11-11 14:24:41

armaros,
Again, I have to disagree with your contention that egalitarianism goes against human nature. What about tribal societies? They're human, their societies are egalitarian, and they don't need a dictatorship to enforce their way of life. As people living in a relatively new culture where all the food is locked up we tend to forget that there are other ways of living, ways that have been around for millions of years.
Also, Communism is antithetical to Fascism. Any good fascist will tell you that, and distance himself as much as possible from any association with Communism. Fascism is an ideology which exalts nationalism and racial purity, two things Communism seeks to eradicate. Communism sees things pretty much in terms of access to capital, i.e. labor relationships.Posted by jaybee73 on 2008-11-11 13:12:39

jaybee
the reason communist societies failed is because they denied human nature.
They cannot exist in democracy because as soon as one among the collective dis-believes in communism, the concept of egalitarianism falls.
So to maintaining that egalitarianism dictatorship is required.
Only one country/place ever voted for communists to power, San Marino, tiny land inside Italy, smaller than Rhode Island.
They were governed as a social democracy.
Communism is just another form of fascism disguised in the people power directive.Posted by armaros on 2008-11-11 12:19:46

I continue to be confused by the amount hate that some people show toward others. I do not and would never condone using violence to the point of killing people to get my point across, but iI do believe that protest and nonviolent revolution are necessary sometimes. Just like our own Revolution, sometime even war is required to change things.
Are they argry and hateful because of the violent act he planned and almost executed? Do they disagree with his left of center point of view? Do they think that people should not be actively involved in the workings of their government and they should not be allowed to protest if they are outraged? Do they believe that we should just shut up and accept the status quo? Do they always follow a Republican president and always hate a Democratic president? Do they believe in a true form of democracy, or would they prefer a monarchy with a king to rule over them, or maybe a fascist dictatorship in which their views are violently enforced, or maybe a theocracy? Are they not able to believe that someone could repent for a past offense? Do they believe that anyone who is politically to the left of GW Bush is a liberal or even a communist and must be hated?
On the other hand, do they believe that GWB has been a good president? Do they agree with everything he has done? Do they believe that we has implemented policies that are good for them and their family? Have they been paying attention? Do they get all their news and information from Fox news and right wing radio? Do they believe everything they hear from these sources?
Ok, now I understand better.Posted by enviroman47 on 2008-11-11 10:08:05

I will try to be nice, but I don't really care if you don't post this...
I can't believe someone would let you post on their website, yes, I do think this person here thinks like you do! You are just like OJ Simpson, got away with it, did ya? Well, sir, I do hate you and everything you have done! I think you are scum of the Earth, your wife too. I can't believe anyone would send their kids to a school with you or wife! I can't even believe you got where you are today. I hope you loose your jobs and income, you don't deserve any of it! Please shut up and go away!
PS I hope this was nice enough because it doesn't even come close to the anger about these people that I and thousands of others feel.Posted by tracy2 on 2008-11-11 06:43:22

Armaros,
I disagree with your contention that communism is the antithesis of democracy, at least in theory. This is from Wikipedia: "According to the Marxist argument for communism, the main characteristic of human life in class society is alienation; and communism is desirable because it entails the full realization of human freedom." I don't think that any of the attempts so far to set up pure communistic societies have been faithful to this ideal, largely because of how they were brought about, and therefore have failed. But to say that Communism, per se, and Democracy are incompatible is false. Communism is largely a socio-economic structure that is classless, and gives all workers equal access to information, capital and power, and would inherently be democratic. I disagree with Marx on the point of how this system would be realized. As far as I understand, he thought it could only be brought about by upheaval and revolution. This clearly hasn't worked. I think it needs to come about gradually, starting in places like worker-owned companies, which already exist. (like Dykes Lumber, a chain of construction material supply stores here in the northeast U.S.) People need to see and experience examples of this kind of system in action before they can accept it as a viable way of life: it can't be forced down anyone's throat. That's when totalitarianism arises. And, that's where I think the confusion comes in, and people associate communism with anti-democratic ideals. It's not the system itself, but the methods that have so far been utilized for bringing it about.Posted by jaybee73 on 2008-11-11 06:34:26

Thank you Mr. Ayers. I appreciate your post.
The brevity to weight ratio of your post indicates that your own personal copy of Strunk and White lost it's cover many years ago.
I have asked my own twenty-something children to read your post but I can only hope for them, I cannot compel them.
Again, Thank You!Posted by twmcneil on 2008-11-10 21:10:17

Hi, y'all!
Mr. Ayers, I'm quite surprised at you. Didn't you know that the Republican party is led by dastardly power players who will do and say anything to keep their power? Weren't you aware that the Republican base is comprised of hateful, gullible nimrods who will believe anything if it gives their unappreciative team a chance of winning, meaning they too win vicariously even though they don't really?
I wouldn't feel too special, though. If they couldn't use you to discredit Obama, they would've found something else.
Caught a light sneeze. Dreamed a little dream.
Made my own pretty hate machine.
Tori Amos or Rupert Murdoch?
Ta-ta!Posted by Aunty Rightwing on 2008-11-10 16:29:27

Mr Ayers
You state that this "was a long strange trip".
It still is and has just begun.
You profess to celebrate democracy, egalitarianism (whatever that means), human rights and your opposition to so called "illegal wars".
Then how does that reconcile with your past as a terrorist with a group which wanted to submit the USA to Communist rule and one which choose violent means to achieving this aim.
How does that match with human rights and democracy?
How democratic is to support communism which is an antithesis of democracy.
People do evolve and as such the label "terrorist" may not apply to you today.
Who knows.
Who cares.
What does stand is what you have stood for all those years and the revolution you desired to bring upon America by pitting black against white knowing that had the blacks followed your desires, they would have been hurt in ways you would never have, having been a middle class white boy bored into radicalism spiked by Acid and foreign revolutionary propaganda.
Your views during the 60s differed only in details from those of Charles Manson, a sadistic insane murderer.
Revolution via race war.
You dedicated your book to Sirhan Sirhan, among others, a coward who murdered Bobby Kennedy and surely Bobby was no Nixon and opposed the VN war. So what was it about Sirhan you so admired that you dedicated a piece of your work to him?
So now in your 60s, reminiscing of the 60s, you claim that somehow painting you to be Obama s friend may have backfired on the Republicans or even Hilary.
Again, who knows. It seems Americans gave the benefit of doubt to Obama and entrusted him to be their president regardless of what, whom, where he associated with in his past.
His past. Not yours. Yours is not washed. Obamas past was just not soiled enough by yours in the minds of Americans, Mr Ayers.
Whatever Obama s past with you, few will learn the extent now that rhetoric has given way to facts.
But you will fade back into the shade as Obama will hopefully try to do what he will swear to do.
Defend the USA from all enemies foreign and domestic.
You will feel used as will many others in your camp and I bet in time you will re-emerge to reclaim your wounded ego only to tarnish Obama who will again ask for the benefit of doubt in 4 years.
He has taken your movement politics approach and used it to take office while you await the changes you think he will bring.
But Obama s first objective is Obama. The change is what Obama needs to change when Obama needs changing. The hope is that the change will change Obama again for Obama.
But as you said, none of us know the future and it seems few of us, or too few of us know the past enough to even try to predict it.
So your need to keep the lid on the past, re-write it, blacking out the moments and people you yourself witnessed during the "struggle" but must feel weird about today, is understandable. Better to be remembered as a friend of Obama than a criminal claiming to be a revolutionary.
Your repeating of the lie that Palin caused chants of "Kill Him" betrays those memories as I suspect you had your moments when someone supporting you called out to commit a grave insane act making you wonder;
-is this a struggle or just a senseless crime.
Or when someone around you praised the Tate murders as "Wild".
At the end of the day, there are no revolutions, only thugs who sometimes find the right time and declare grandiose plans along their desire to take revenge, lynch or worse. When they succeed and are taken up by larger forces, we call them revolutions. When they do not, then we call them mass murders, robberies or riots.
The moments when probably even you realized your movements only grace was its incompetence as otherwise your would have even more ghosts haunting you than your own comrades' who died by their own nail bomb.Posted by armaros on 2008-11-10 15:50:22

Mr. Ayers:
I've been waiting for your rebuttal of all this crap. Thanks. And perfect timing, by the way.
It's been a long, strange, McCarthyist trip, indeed. But this byway is over. Now, onward, openly and optimistic. Until the next time. And it will be sooner than America needs. But what do they know about the "real America" or what She needs?
The best to you, your family and your associates, whatever their inclinations.Posted by GalapagoLarry on 2008-11-07 13:25:27

Thank you, thank you THANK YOU Mr. Ayers for your words and thoughts. ;)
I have been hoping to hear your pov on the election and you did not disappoint.Posted by Dusty on 2008-11-07 12:30:19

AsGeorge Santyana wrote in "The voice of Reason" in 1905,
"Those who do not learn from the past, are condemned to repeat it."
I say: "Show me someone who never makes a mistake, and I'll show you someone who never does anything."Posted by frank67 on 2008-11-07 12:13:01